A few years ago, Mr Enigma decided to test the laws of physics and see if he and the SV650S could occupy the same space as the landscape. All evidence shows that he failed to accomplish that goal, however, he'll probably never remember if he was successful. Sometimes our minds block out the trauma and erase those brain cells. In his case, it's probably for the best. "" And though nobody actually witnessed the event, those of us who saw the aftermath can now have a good laugh at Mr Enigma's expense. You see, Mr Enigma could not remember anything but the last 10 seconds after his mind endured the trauma of his scientific experiment. Every time he saw the mangled wreckage it was like the first time. Had we not been worried about the possible permanence of his condition, we could've really had some fun with him. And poor Mr Enigma will never remember the two cute girls who looked at him like they would a lost puppy dog and were just dying to comfort him. We promise, we'll never show the video. Of course Les and I were rapidly growing tired of hearing "woah, what happened?" Every 10 seconds while we laid out our plans to hurry Mr Enigma off to the funny farm. Luckily, Mr Enigma turned out ok.. for the most part.

After closer inspection the extent of the damage was not as bad as it initially looked. The rear subframe was bent, but only slightly and was easily repaired. Many of the plastic pieces could have been salvaged, but matching paint and or painting after plastic welding would have been problematic. Many of the plastic pieces had small vital parts that had either vaporized or been carried off by small furry creatures at the crash site. So, following a tried and true rule, when parts must be replaced, it's time to upgrade. A visit to 2WheelJunkies (since defunct) had a fresh new fiberglass fairing on it's way. An order at Cumberland Cycles was placed for the remaining pieces which included: brake lever, brake pedal, tail light, mirror, windscreen, exhaust (not part of the wreck, but necessary for the "upgrade"), front fairing bracket, instrument panel skin and maybe a few other odds and ends that might have slipped my mind.

Bolting on the broken parts like levers brackets etc. was trivial. The major tasks were preparing the body work, fixing the tank and straightening the rear sub

frame. The tank was the most time consuming. I started by peeling the paint off the tank using a product appropriately called.. Peeler. And it did just that.

It worked quite well too. You spray the stuff on, keep it saturated for about 10 minutes and then when it's dry, you simply blow the paint flakes off with an air hose. It took a couple of applications to make all the paint go away. I just needed to get the bulk of the paint off. After the tank dried, I hit it with a wire brush for a bit. You'll want to get all the paint off the top. I left the paint underneath alone. The only thing that sees that site of the tank is the airbox, and even the factory paint under there looks ugly.

 After the wire brushing, it was time for a few nice thick coats of primer.  Get some good self etching primer/filler.  That'll just help fill any scratches and stuff.  It's probably better to not spray primer over the dents you plan on filling though.  I left those places bare.  Primarily, the primer at this stage in the game is to prevent flash rust and keep moisture off the metal.  I chose to just use some bondo on the dents since they weren't that deep.  If you choose to use bondo, get some of the lighter tiger hair filled stuff.  Don't use the dense body putty.  Plan on spreading it in several thin layers letting it cure between layers.  Getting body work to come out right takes a LOT of patience. So don't be in a hurry.  If you don't have the patience to pull it off, then perhaps you'd be better of paying somebody else to do it.  If you think you need another layer.. put it on.  When sanding it smooth, if you think you need to sand it down and fill in another spot.. do it.  If there's any doubt in your mind and you think it might not be perfect.. it isn't.  Work on it some more.  

 
After a bunch of sanding and patience.. this is what we have.

Mask it off and start painting

You'll want to mount the fairing on the bike before sanding and painting.

Now to paint the rest of the new body work.  It comes with a HEAVY coat of primer on it.  You should it very smooth with progressively finer grit sand paper.  Start with maybe a 240, then 300ish, then 600ish.  Wet sand it.   Then mask it off and paint it.

I screwed up a few times and got some runs.  No big deal, just let it dry, sand it and paint it again.  You can't rush painting and body work.  Take your time.  It took me 2 weeks to get it right.

The rest of the pics are here http://pegmonkey.com/gallery/howto/sv650_crash/ You can follow along the progression of the project.